This post is part of a long series I plan to report about Palestine as a country, culture, and humans across multiple communities in hopes that I spread the word about Palestine and what is happening there.

The fact that I am an Arab obviously comes with perceived bias which is a perception that I accept considering that most of the people on this platform are not Arabs. As much as I believe it is something I am able to refute using my own history, I prefer to keep the focus of this series on Palestine itself and let the series speak for itself.

However, considering the aforementioned fact of my identity, I have challenged myself and limited myself to use mostly sources that are outside of the Arab world when it comes to facts. Therefore, all the events mentioned here come from non-Arab sources which you will be able to verify yourself by reading the sources below. In fact, I implore you to check out those sources regardless of the series.

Image source

The first smaller myth which made up the big Israel myth is that there's something called "The Jews", all of them as one entity throughout history. One people, one race, same hopes, oppressed for 2000 years, not individuals, but just one entity. This post is going to be fairly short as this point was very easy to rebut.

If we were to compare the Jewish communities in Europe to the ones in the Arab world, we'd find a vast difference. In Arab countries by the end of the 19th century, there were 150,000 Jews in Morocco, 80,000 in Egypt, and 50,000 thousand in Iraq which roughly makes up 25% of Baghdad's population. Those Jewish communities were an integral part of the Arab countries where they lived. Jewish Arabs whose lives and properties were safe with their own schools and places of worship.

There's no doubt they faced issues faced by many minorities but Jewish communities were a part of the fabric which made Arab regions. Those regions were ruled by the Ottoman Empire, an empire that was very tolerant of Jews at the time.

In Europe

On the other side of the globe, Jewish communities had a different reality, a reality that was created by the changes that Europe was going through at the time. You see, since the late 1700s, Europe was moving from giant empires into nation-states. Those empires contained vast lands which had people of different races and religions. Kings descended from the same families and minorities were treated as second-class citizens. Sometimes those minorities were doing well, sometimes not.

Jewish communities in the European empires were just another minority like many others in Europe. But, they were also a self-enclosed minority. Jewish people lived in what is called "Ghettos". Sometimes, they were forced into living like that by physical or societal pressure, and other times, they simply chose to. They had little communication with the outside world and saw themselves as different.

However, the new nation-state idea that came to replace the old empires changed this situation. Germany turned from a few scattered small kingdoms into a unified German state, the same goes for Italy and Poland. What's the difference between this and that? Well, very few things changed, however, nation-statehood came with a promise, a new reality. That reality simply stated that there's no such thing as majorities and minorities, we're German, Italian, French, or Polish.

It stated that if we have different religions or races, we all remain citizens of the country, citizens who are integrated into one state. The Jewish communities' reactions differed from one another to this ideology, some refused the idea and that in order for them to remain Jewish, they needed to isolate and reject the idea to differentiate themselves from this new identification system.

Their point of view was reinforced by the violence that Jewish communities living under threat of getting attacked, especially in Poland and Russia. So much so that the term "Pogrom" appeared which meant killing Jews, destroying their properties, and burning their homes.

On the other hand, some Jewish communities saw that this violence was temporary and would disappear over time, and that integration was the solution. They saw a chance to learn and benefit from the modern and fast-changing European knowledge, and that they would melt into society by becoming doctors, poets, and bank clerks. They saw that they wouldn't be losing their identities or anything as religion and language would preserve their culture.

Either way, those who accepted the idea and those who rejected it saw themselves as European citizens in European countries. The point of everything I said is to reject the idea that there was ever an idea called Jews as "One people". Jewish people were individuals whose lives were changing from better to worse, or worse to better depending on when they were in time, and where they were in geography.

The Zionist ideology is/was trying to do the opposite and paint a picture of hostility toward Jews being an unchanged, fateful constant to the extent that a Zionist thinker called Leon Pinsker said anti-Semitism is a 2000-year-old incurable genetic disease and infection.

What this means is that this "One People" myth was just that, a myth, a lie told over and over to paint a constant oppression that existed and differed for Jews just like it existed and differed for many minorities. More importantly, their reaction differed from one Jewish person to another.

But, Zionism is still a part of Judaism and to oppose, it means that you'd be anti-semitic, right? Well, no. But that's what I will be covering in the next part.

Previous Parts

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 1: Tantura
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 2: Protecting The Israel Mythology
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 3: The Israel Foundation Myth

Follow-up parts

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 5: The "Zionism is Judaism" Myth
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 6: The "Land Without a People" Myth
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 7: The "Independence" Myth (Chapter 1)
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 8: The "Independence" Myth (Chapter 2)
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 9: The "Independence" Myth (Chapter 3)
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 10: The "Independence" Myth (Final Chapter
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 11: The "David vs Goliath" Myth (1/2)
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 12: The "David vs Goliath" Myth (2/2)
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Final Part: The "Only Democracy in the Middle East" Myth
The Tragic Story of Palestine - Responding to Arguments and Concerns
The Tragic Story of Palestine - "It Was A Hamas Base of Operation"
The Tragic Story of Israel
School Lessons From Gaza

Sources

The Arabs: A History - Eugene Rogan
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
Ten Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe
Palestine: ...it is something colonial (Decolonizing the mind)
One hundred questions and answers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Pedro Brieger
Tantura Documentary
Executions and Mass Graves in Tantura - Forensic Architecture
Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert
"Nakba Law" - Amendment No. 40 to the Budgets Foundations Law
Eye Witnesses Statments
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 2 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 3 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 4 | Featured Documentary
Anatomy of the Israeli mind
Collusion Across The Jordan: King Abdullah, The Zionist Movement, And The Partition Of Palestine - Avi Shlaim